Jack
Jeffrey Photography
‘O ka lale au o Kaiona
I nonoho i ka malu ‘ohai
I am the sweet voiced bird of Kaiona
Who dwells in the ‘ohai shade
The mythical lale, a bird for which we have no other name or referent,
is remembered in chant and story for the beauty of its song. Lale
also means “to encourage, urge, stir to action.” Kaiona, the benevolent
goddess of the Wai‘anae Mountains, served as inspiration for the
best known of Bernice Pauahi’s chant names – Ka Wahine Hele Lā o
Kaiona, The Woman Who Walks in the Sunlight of Kaiona.
Ka Lale o Kaiona is dedicated
to intelligent discussion of Hawaiian poetry and to a renewed understanding
of the words to which the lale of our kūpuna gave sweet voice. We
feature four mele in each four-month volume of our forum: their
texts, translations, backgrounds, and interpretations. Beginning
with volume 2 – the current, March to June issue of Ka Lale
– we encourage you, in turn, to contribute to this discussion with
thoughts, connections, critiques, and memories of your own.
We hope that our dialog will help to correct
an egregious flaw in the conventional, classroom wisdom of our day:
that mele Hawaiʻi belongs to a second-class literature unworthy
of serious study and appreciation. It is, in fact, helu ‘ekahi:
rich, deep, and wonderfully nourishing. It is the beloved poi ‘uoʻuo
that feeds our na‘au and sustains the
nexus of our Hawaiian intellect and emotion.
|
